


Tales from the Zones

by Nokomis



Category: Bandom, My Chemical Romance
Genre: Alternate Universe - Killjoys, Danger Days: The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-15
Updated: 2012-04-15
Packaged: 2017-11-03 17:17:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,260
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/383930
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nokomis/pseuds/Nokomis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Several drabbles set in the Killjoys 'verse.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tales from the Zones

**Secondary Aftermath**

“Fuckin’ Dracs,” Frank hissed, trying and failing to take off his jacket. His shoulder felt jacked. He didn’t say anything about Korse; there was nothing to say. The bastard has spared them and fucked them over in one move, and Frank was going to pretend like the cocksucker didn’t even exist.

“Is it dislocated?” Gerard set down the transmitter he was trying to jam new batteries into. His hands were shaking and Frank had already seen him put them in backwards twice. 

“I don’t know… I need help getting this jacket off,” Frank said. His jacket was easily the one that offered the most maneuverability, and it was a bad sign that he couldn’t get out of it.

Mikey and Ray were scribbling things down on the map of the Zones they had, trying to figure out where Korse had taken… where Korse had gone. 

Gerard stood behind Frank and tried to ease the jacket off slowly. Frank made a tiny strangled sound, and Gerard immediately began feeling his shoulders, trying to find the source of the problem. 

“Left side,” Frank clarified. “I think it’s just twisted.”

“Good,” Gerard replied, still rubbing Frank’s shoulders, now in a slow circular pattern. “Jamming arms back into sockets is not my fuckin’ forte.” 

“That’s why we have a Toro,” Frank said, arching his back and letting his eyes close. Gerard’s hands were warm and strong and pressed _just right_ against the sore spots, and Frank thought he could probably forget everything that had happened today if Gerard never, ever stopped.

Gerard’s hands slowed, but Frank didn’t open his eyes as he felt Gerard lean in and rest his head against Frank’s, his body flush against him, wrapping his arms around him like he was latching onto a life preserver.

“We’ll get her,” Gerard whispered.

“It’s what we do,” Frank agreed, tangling his fingers around Gerard’s.

 

*

**Technicolor Heroes**

Mikey knew that his world was hinged on Gerard; it was the one constant in his life.

They were separated when shit went down and sometimes Mikey doesn’t know how they made it without each other. He sometimes only remembered it in flashes: how dark things had seemed with ash staining everything grey, waking up every morning feeling utterly alone because the people he’d found didn’t know what kind of cereal he’d eaten while watching cartoons when he was seven, how the world has suddenly taken Technicolor brightness when his brother had shown up, all red hair and graffiti-covered Trans Am. 

Then there was Ray and they’d found Frank and lost Bob, but everything revolved around Gerard, it always had, and now people who weren’t Mikey appreciated that.

Now there were posters with their faces on them and dusting Dracs seemed normal instead of the victory it had felt like only a few short years ago, and Mikey sometimes missed his brother even when he was standing right there beside him.

The night after their little motorbaby was taken by Korse, Mikey curled up beside his brother. Frank had taken off alone, storming into the night. He’d probably spend a few hours breaking shit that was already broken alone in the desert, and in the morning he would return ready to set out on a rescue mission. Ray was sleeping fitfully by the fire, tossing and turning, and Mikey wrapped his arms tightly around himself.

“Fuckin’ Korse,” Gerard was saying, continuing the steady stream of invectives he’d been spitting out, and Mikey couldn’t stand it anymore.

“I miss you,” he blurted out. 

Gerard stopped his rant. Mikey leaned up on his elbow, staring down at his brother, who looked so different from the Jersey kid he’d been before all this, who looked like a fuckin’ hero and who had stared down Korse like he was armed with more than a painted-up vending machine phaser. 

They’ve been together every day since their reunion, and Gerard knows exactly what he means.

“It hasn’t been just the two of us against the world in a long time,” Gerard said softly. He took Mikey’s hand, pulled it close to his chest.

“Funny how we really are against the world now,” Mikey said. “All those comic books did come in handy.”

Gerard grinned. “And Handsome Don thought he was wasting his money.”

The grin faded quickly. No one had heard what was beyond the Zones, not since the bombs first started dropping, and they both pretended like Jersey was still there, still the same, even though they both knew it was impossible.

Mikey tucked his head against Gerard’s shoulder and stared up at the stars, letting Gerard squeeze his hand tight enough that Mikey couldn’t feel his fingertips.

“We’re doing the right thing,” Mikey assured Gerard, because that’s what brothers did. They made the world safer. “She’ll be okay.”

He didn’t voice his next thought, about the greater good and sacrifice. It was something they both knew and saying aloud would jinx the rescue mission.

“I’m gonna kill that bastard,” Gerard said. Mikey knew that tone; it was the one Gerard only used when he was making a promise he would die trying to keep.

Mikey held on tighter, and pressed a kiss against Gerard’s neck. “I’ll help.”

He stayed pressed close as they fell asleep, Gerard’s warmth staving off the cold desert night.

 

*

**Saving the Damsel**

Everyone knows who the Killjoys are, have since even before their faces were plastered all over every wall left standing in Battery City and the surrounding encampments. Lyn-Z appreciates them, mostly because they’re the outlaws that get the most focus, leaving others – namely herself—free to work in relative anonymity.

She’s never met them, probably never will since there’s a death sentence on their heads and Korse and his Draculoids always get their man, but sometimes she sends them a token of thanks – usually something exotic like an orange or apple – through the underground. Most of the other rebels help out like that, because the Killjoys are their fuckin’ symbols.

Really, they seem more like storybook characters than real people, like they’re Superman and Han Solo and MacGyver all smashed into one.

So it’s really fucking unexpected when she stumbles across a whole flock of dracs surrounding Party Poison. She’s taking a shortcut Show Pony had mentioned to her at her last drop-off, and she pulls her bike to an abrupt stop when she realizes what she’s seeing. That red hair and yellow mask are undeniable, standing out like a beacon against the starkness of the landscape.

He is still armed but there was no way he’s getting out of this one on his own, not since dracs always send out a message to Korse as soon as they spot an objective. She scans the landscape for any of the other Killjoys, but Party Poison is alone. 

“Well, fuck,” she says. She doesn’t want to waste fuel on what could be a hopeless situation, but she has to help. She surveys the landscape and decides that the nearby remains of a fire truck are her best bet. She hides her bike behind it, preparing for a quick escape if she pulls this shit off, then opens the saddlebag on her bike and pulls out the home-rigged flamethrower that she’s been working on. 

“Guess you’re getting the field test,” she tells it, checking that the reserve was full of fuel and hoisting it up.

Party Poison is still holding out, but she can tell that his gun was losing its charge and that he’ll be overrun soon. She takes a deep breath and turns on the nozzle, praying it doesn’t blow up in her face, and fires a stream of flames.

It works really, ridiculously well. It’s completely awesome. Lyn-Z hasn’t taken off her helmet and the sounds the dracs make as they catch fire is muted and distant. She takes out half the dracs in the first few passes with the flames and quickly has cleared out enough and has distracted the others so that Party Poison can run.

She cuts off the flames when Party Poison got to the fire truck, and she leaps down, motioning for him to get on the bike behind her.

She kick-starts the bike and takes off, sending up a cloud of dust in their wake. His hands are tight on her waist and she can still see writhing dracs in her mind as she comes to a stop a relatively safe distance away.

She takes off the helmet and smiles at Party Poison, who looks at her like she’s some sort of big damn hero. 

“Thanks for saving my life,” he says. His voice is different than she expects. Very human, and it drives home that the Killjoys are just people like her. People who are taking on the fucking universe. 

“Anytime,” she says, trying to be casual and failing. “Want a ride somewhere?”

“Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, I’d like that.”

Lyn-Z’s cheeks feel warm, and she can’t help the smile spreading across her face. “Let’s go.”

 

*

**Solo Gig**

The thing about the Zones is that it’s really fucking easy to die in them.

Dewees has survived this long by not getting too attached to anyone. Banding together is all well and good in theory, but in reality it tends to get you fucked over and left to die. It happened to him early on and he only survived that mess by pure luck, and now he’s on a permanent mission to look out for number one.

Right now making himself useful is the best way to stay alive; he’s somehow ended up working for the resistance, keeping smuggled goods in hidden nooks and crannies of his place. It used to be some kind of New Age shop back before shit went down, and is labyrinthine in ways that confuse even Dracs, which Dewees appreciates.

The only thing is that this shit brings him in contact with the Killjoys.

It isn’t that they’re bad dudes, it’s just that they’re _wanted_ and their faces are plastered all over the fucking newspapers and on giant wanted posters and it’s a lot more public than Dewees is comfortable with. He knows how shit like this always ends, and right now he’s in prime cannon fodder position.

Usually his contact with them is Jet Star, which Dewees appreciates. He’s less of a target than Party Poison. He hands over the bundles of letters he never opens and the rations that have made their way to the Killjoys, including one perfect orange Zoid sent. Dewees had been tempted to keep that one; not many citrus trees had survived. 

This time it’s laser guns. He leads Jet Star to the attic, and carefully pries up the floorboard hiding the case.

Jet Star is more interested in looking around than at the guns. 

“You play, Full Effect?” he asks, nodding towards a keyboard propped up under an eave.

“Yeah, I did,” Dewees answers. “A little bit of everything, really.”

Jet Star’s face lights up. “Do you have a guitar?”

Dewees does. Jet Star just stares at it when Dewees hands it to him, running his hands over the strings lovingly. 

“It’s out of tune,” Dewees says unnecessarily as Jet Star begins turning the tuning pegs, strumming softly, head bent down and focused entirely on the instrument.

“It’s been a really long time since I’ve held a guitar,” Jet Star said dreamily. “Didn’t even realize how badly I missed it.”

The strumming begins to take form as a melody, and Dewees’ fingers itch to tap out a few notes on the keyboard, to add a beat, to help make it a song. Jet Star stops, guiltily, a few minutes later, when Dewees sets the case of laser guns down beside Jet Star.

“Fuck, I was supposed to be in and out of here,” he says, setting the guitar down. “Don’t want to stay here long enough for anyone to realize you’re involved.”

It’s the first time any of the Killjoys has explicitly said they try to keep Dewees out of trouble. The thought settles comfortably in his mind, putting to rest his worries that they don’t care about the people who help them. 

“You can take it with you,” Dewees offers. “The guitar, I mean.”

A grin lights up Jet Star’s face. “Man, I’d love to.” He pauses before continuing, grin fading, “But I can’t, there’s no room for it and we travel light.”

Of course they do. They are fugitives, they can’t haul around guitars. The words come out of Dewees’ mouth before he thinks about anything more than the soft, happy expression on Jet Star’s face when he’d played. “You can come by and play whenever you want. I’m pretty far off the grid.”

He doesn’t expect the hug that envelops him, but he just tries to avoid breathing in Jet Star’s hair and squeezes tight back. 

Maybe he’s not so interested in keeping this a solo gig after all. 

*

 

**But I Think I Could Love Ya**

“You know what I miss?” Frank said suddenly.

Gerard raised an eyebrow. The missing-game had been popular for the first year or so, but nowadays no one really talked about _before_. There was no sense in it; everyone’d slowly accustomed themselves to the fact that that world no longer existed. So Frank had to have been thinking about this for a long time to bring it up.

“Slow dancing,” Frank said with a sigh. 

Gerard blinked. “Out of everything that’s gone you pick slow dancing?”

“Fucked-up, right?” Frank said wryly. “It’s not like I even was super into slow dancing when we had it. But now everything’s life and death on the knife’s edge, and I just… I keep thinking of when I was a kid and I’d hang out at my mom’s dance studio and sometimes she’d twirl me around the room, or one of the ballerinas would. Nothing like that anymore.”

*

It took a few illicit messages back and forth to Dr Death Defying – tricky, when you were trying to keep them from someone in your crew -- to set it up. Ray made sure nothing was going down that night and Mikey somehow found dress shirts and ties for them all, which they put on under their jackets while Frank was off on a quest to find a completely fictional stash in the desert nearby.

There was no dance floor, but the ground near the bonfire was level and clear. They set up a punch bowl filled with clean water, made a banner out of string and old flyers that declared it Prom Night 2019.

When Frank returned from his fruitless mission, bitching about needles in goddamn haystacks, it took him a minute to notice what was going on. He read the sign, mouthing the words silently and stared at them in their fancy shirts. Stunned, he laughed when Mikey offered him one and gave them each a bone-crushing hug. 

“So that’s why you wanted to stop in Zone Two,” Frank said, staring at the button-up and the tie decorated with jack o’ lanterns Mikey had procured, and a minute later stripped off his usual shirt to put it on.

The boom box was letting out snarled gasps of static. The sky was lit by a half moon and countless stars that always seemed somehow fake to Gerard, still somehow unused to seeing so many in the polluted, artificially bright nights of Jersey and the dark clouded skies after the pig bombs fell. Frank was looking at them all with this bright, ridiculous smile, like he couldn’t believe they’d put together a dance for him.

Then the static started to clear and Dr. Death Defying’s voice came booming out. “Got a stunner for you kids out there tonight. Get your dancing shoes on and jet to the dance floor, killjoys, it’s a helluva night.”

When “Crimson and Clover” began playing, Frank reached for Gerard’s hand. Out of the corner of his eye Gerard could see Mikey and Ray, grinning, twirl each other around, kicking up tiny dust clouds. Gerard squeezed tight and then twirled Frank slowly.

Then he wrapped his arms around Frank, who threw his arms around Gerard’s neck, and they slowly danced under the starry sky, soft music washing over them as Frank rested his head on Gerard’s shoulder.

“Thanks,” Frank mumbled happily, feeling warm and content in Gerard’s arms. “Tonight is perfect.”

Gerard completely agreed.

*

**Escaping the Storms**

“Fuck me,” Mikey said, staring at the ominous clouds gathering in the sky. “We need to get back to the diner.”

“Immediately,” Gerard agreed. Before they’d left on this salvage mission Ray’d hacked into Battery City’s weather reports and there had been no rainstorms anticipated. That meant this storm was bad fucking news.

“I hope it’s not blood rain again,” Mikey said, running awkwardly towards the Trans Am with the canvas bag of filched electronics banging against his knees. Gerard took a second to shove another circuit board into his own bag; Frank’d been making noise about needing new hardware.

It took a precious few minutes to get the t-tops jammed back into place. Gerard misaligned them once, too focused on the darkening sky, but snapped back into focus when he realized they had to get the fuck out of there. They dropped their salvaged goods in the trunk space cleared up by the t-tops, and Gerard had the engine turning over by the time Mikey found the binocu-visors and started focusing the dials, staring off in the distance.

“Not blood,” Mikey said, biting his lip. “Can’t tell what it is. It might be something new.”

“Fuck,” Gerard said. If it was something acid-based the tires were fucked, and it’d been hard enough replacing just one after that last blow out chasing Dracs out of a cleared Zone. He took a deep breath as he accelerated, double-shifting to get the hell out of dodge faster. “Got a visual yet?”

Mikey had taken the binocu-visors off and was manually adjusting its settings; he slid them back on and said, “Crap on a stick.”

“Acid?”

“I think it’s eye-and-bile rain,” Mikey said. “Go faster.”

“If I go any faster I’m going to throw a rod,” Gerard said. “This isn’t exactly a well-maintained road.”

“If you don’t go faster the whole car is going to be fucked, you know what happens when you get bile in your intake,” Mikey replied. He threw the binocu-visors in the backseat. “Remember the Monte Carlo?”

“That was a piece of shit anyhow,” Gerard said, patting the steering wheel to let the Trans Am know the Monte Carlo wasn’t even in its league. He sped up, gritting his teeth as the shocks failed to take any of the impact from the bumpy road. “We aren’t gonna make it.”

“We’re almost to sixty-six,” Mikey replied. “We’ll make it.”

The first drops started to hit the windshield. Gerard slammed on the gas as an eyeball bounced off the windshield with a sickening sound. His knuckles were white on the steering wheel and Mikey grabbed onto his arm, fingers clenched into the leather reassuringly.

“We’ll make it,” Mikey repeated, and then Route 66 was suddenly visible. Gerard bounced over the last few hundred yards and skidded onto the smooth pavement, suddenly able to go full throttle to escape the fucked-up horror rain that would have left them stranded out in the desert.

Mikey’s grip on his arm loosened, but he didn’t let go until the diner was in sight. Gerard felt anchored, like the rains couldn’t hit when his brother was there.


End file.
